NBA playoffs 2022 – The Dallas Mavericks are building a familiar formula around Luka Doncic

NOBODY IN THE Dallas Mavericks‘ front office exchanged high-fives after details were finalized on the deal made minutes before the Feb. 10 trade deadline. The consensus in the room was that moving on from big man Kristaps Porzingis was in the best interest of the franchise, but it wasn’t a cause for celebration.

Porzingis, after all, had been acquired in a blockbuster deal two years earlier to pair with Luka Doncic as the franchise’s foundational pieces. Porzingis was supposed to be the co-star the Mavericks and their 23-year-old superstar needed to help form a long-term contender.

But Dallas, led by new general manager Nico Harrison and first-year coach Jason Kidd, eventually came to the realization that Porzingis, when he wasn’t injured, provided clutter for Doncic instead of the space he needed to operate. The team determined Porzingis wasn’t a fit alongside Doncic, and he wasn’t going to be the ticket to one in a trade.

So the Mavs broke Porzingis’ maximum salary into two smaller ones the Washington Wizards wanted to shed, bringing Spencer Dinwiddie and Davis Bertans to Dallas, citing flexibility and depth as reasons the trade made sense. Dallas didn’t anticipate taking a step back because of the trade — the Mavs had a better record without Porzingis than with him — and hoped Dinwiddie and Bertans would benefit from a change of scenery and provide scoring punch to the bench, but it certainly wasn’t considered to be a win-now move.

Mostly, it signified a return to square one in the team’s yearslong search for a star sidekick for Doncic. And it introduced another question: Did the Mavs need to follow the modern NBA trend of having multiple stars to contend?

“You always want talent to win championships,” Kidd said after Dallas defeated the LA Clippers behind a career-high 51 points from Doncic on the night of the trade deadline. “As we go through this journey, we’ll see if we come across a No. 2 guy.

“It could be the team that we have where there is no…